Xi's military purge spills over into elite circle of generals

• A member of China's highest military authority is under investigation for corruption.
• Admiral Miao Hua is one of six members of an exclusive commission led by Xi that oversees the Chinese military.
• He is the latest in a series of senior defense officials to be expelled from the Chinese military.

A high-ranking admiral at China's Central Military Commission, the top body commanding its forces, has been investigated, China's Defense Ministry said Thursday.

Admiral Miao Hua, head of the political work department, has been suspended and is being investigated for “serious discipline violations”, ministry spokesperson Wu Qian said at a briefing. press.

This accusation generally refers to corruption.

An investigation into a commission member like Miao is important because the six-member commission, headed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping himself, is the top body that oversees China's military forces.

However, Miao is not among the commission's vice chairmen, who are generally considered China's strategic leaders. Two generals from the People's Liberation Army, Zhang Youxia and He Weidong, hold these positions.

Xi, who has consolidated much of China's decision-making power under his authority over the past decade, is the commission's highest authority as chairman.

Miao, 69, was an army political commissar based in Fujian in the 1990s and early 2000s, around the same time Xi was governor of the province.

The overlap of their rising careers led the two men to be seen as having worked closely together. Two years after Xi became supreme leader in 2012, Miao was transferred to the PLA Navy to serve as its top political commissar.

The announcement of the investigation into Miao comes as The Financial Times reported Wednesday that Admiral Dong Jun, China's defense minister, had also been investigated. The report cites unnamed U.S. officials.

This would make Dong the third Defense Ministry officer to be implicated in a series of corruption investigations. His two predecessors, Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe, were convicted in June of bribery.

Beijing denied the FT's findings, with a Foreign Office spokesperson calling them “chasing winds and shadows”.

Unlike those of the Central Military Commission, the Minister of Defense plays an essentially diplomatic and symbolic role and has no real operational command over Chinese forces.

CNN reported that Miao “is considered a political patron of Dong,” with both men having served in the PLA Navy.

In China, high-ranking officials are almost always found guilty in corruption investigations, although some have received reduced sentences.

Two vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission have already been investigated, but only after leaving the commission. Both were part of the highest body until 2012, when Xi came to power.

Investigations into the careers of the couple Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou were launched in 2014 and 2015.

Since his early days as top leader, Xi has championed a sweeping crackdown on endemic corruption in China's central and local governments.

More recently, it has involved purges in the military, including the ouster last year of several generals and high-ranking officials. The move coincided with Xi's emphasis on modernizing China's military and catching up in strength with U.S. forces.